Author

Assistant Professor of Politics and International Studies, University of Regina

Disclosure statement

Simon Granovsky-Larsen conducts research and solidarity work with the Comité Campesino del Altiplano (CCDA), a Guatemalan peasant social movement organization that has supported the river liberation movement. He has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. He is a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

One morning last year, Santiago, a campesino (peasant farmer) who grows corn and mangoes in southwestern Guatemala, left his home with a plan to engage in industrial sabotage.

Santiago (not his real name) was frustrated by the diversion of the Ixpátz River. Formerly a communal water source for drinking, cleaning and subsistence crop irrigation, the Ixpátz and four other rivers in the Champerico area had been re-routed from their natural courses and into large plantations. Joining forces with other small farmers, Santiago set out with pickaxes and sticks to break up dikes by hand.

With sugarcane and palm plantations expanding in part to meet global demand for biofuel, such a conflict points to a clash between renewable energy and the people affected by its production.

In 2017, after conducting nine years of research on land conflicts in Guatemala, I began to interview the people liberating rivers. The clash over rivers struck me as at once unique and emblematic of broader social and environmental turmoil.

Bitter sugar

The world is searching for cleaner sources of energy. Fossil fuel production is finite, environmentally destructive and politically contentious. These concerns have made growth industries out of alternative energies such as hydroelectricity and biofuel, which counts sugarcane and African palm among its top sources.

Fruit bunches from the African oil palm are transported from a plantation to an extraction plant, in Sayaxche, Guatemala in February 2012.(AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Upstream from the Pacific coast, these same rivers are also being dammed to produce electricity. Thirty-seven hydroelectric dams are operating or under construction within the coastal departments of Retalhuleu, Suchitepéquez, Escuintla and Santa Rosa.

Many local residents also take issue with the dams due to water usage, land access and pollution.

Water theft

All of this has had a negative impact on the lives of rural Guatemalans.

Sugarcane requires three times more water than corn, the primary subsistence crop grown by Guatemalan campesinos. African palm, rubber and banana plantations under expansion in the Pacific region have also diverted community water to satisfy irrigation needs.

Due to a shortage of water, plantations have begun “stealing” water, in the words of people from surrounding communities: diverting river routes, mechanically extracting river water and drilling deep wells.

This drainage of publicly accessible water is occurring in a region where many communities lack piped water for household use. The strain on such a vital resource explains the discontent of those who choose to destroy industrial property and return river water by force.

Violence and death

The social movement that came together around the river water near the Pacific coast did not form in a vacuum. Across Guatemala since at least 2005, communities affected by the expansion of agro-industry, hydroelectric dams and mining have developed innovative tactics in attempts to block these extractive projects.

One widespread form of opposition has been the consultas votes held by affected communities. Around one million Guatemalans voted overwhelmingly against local extractive projects in 78 instances between 2005 and 2013, setting off a number of legal challenges and leading to the suspension of some licenses.

Of the 134 human rights defenders killed between 2007 and 2017 in Guatemala, my research has found that at least 61 were active in the resistance to resource extraction, including mining, dams, agro-industry and more. These figures align with an international trend: the NGO Global Witness reported the murder of 207 land and environmental defenders in 2017 alone.

Dirty renewables

Violence against those engaged in water battles on the Pacific coast has not been as extreme as that seen around Canadian mines, but the movement has experienced repression.

I spoke with one man who faced this violence personally, when private security guards from a sugar company allegedly ambushed the river liberation action he participated in. “In that moment, well, I had bad luck, and they hit me with a pellet from a shotgun. But we did manage to liberate that river, at least for now.”

Even though many rivers have been freed by communities across the Pacific coastal region, the struggle is far from over. Santiago, who helped free the Ixpátz River, now takes part in foot patrols to prevent further theft from any of the five waterways near his community in Champerico.

At another community in Suchitepéquez, a river was freed and now runs deeply, but residents note that the returned water is polluted. “There is a rubber plantation upstream and they throw all their waste into the Icán River,” said Julio. “So the water comes this way and you can’t drink it. The animals do, but we can’t drink that water.”

The social movement tactics referred to as river liberation have opened a new front in an ongoing struggle over land and water usage Guatemala. Consumers in North America and Europe are right to encourage a transition to renewable forms of energy, but we must also look deeper into alternative industries, and ensure that no harm is done in our name.